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Real estate record and builders' guide: v. 85, no. 2181: January 1, 1910

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January i, 1910. ntiKjyjnu ajsju uruiujii 'Ull^ Div6llDTO[^E:STMI.BmLDlKGftppilTE{n^Jll.E,HaUSE3lomPE0^^ Busifftas Affo Theses of GErfeRftl IKtcr^si,^ PRICE PER YEAR IN ADVANCE EIGHT DOLLARS Communications should be addressed to C. W. SWEET Pablished EVerp Saturday By THE RECORD AND GUIDE CO. President, CLINTON W. SWEET Treasurer, F. W. DODGE Vice-Pres. & Genl, Mgr,. H. W. DESMOND Secretary, F. T. MILLER Nos. IX to 15 Elast 24th Street, New York City (Telephone. Madison Square, 44W to 4433.) "Entered at the Post Office at NctD To J k, N.' T., as second-class matter." Co])yrigh(.ed, 1909, by The Record & Guide Co. Vol. LXXXV. JANUARY 1, 1910. No. 2181 ACCORDING to existing indications, the taxiDayers of New- York will, during tiie coming session of the Legisla¬ ture, be chiefly interested in two possible subjects of legisla¬ tion. In the first place, the Legislature will undoubtedly pass some bill designed to regulate the use which the city may make of its recently acquired power of appropriating money for subway construction outside of the restrictions of the constitutional debt limit. These regulations should un¬ doubtedly be very rigid. They should absolutely guarantee that every dollar appropriated for subway construction should be considered as part of the net debt of the city covered by the constitutional provision until it is proved that the sub¬ way in question is capable of earning enough money to pay the interest on the stock issued and a sinking fund for its eventual retirement. Hereafter the strongest kind of pres¬ sure will undoubtedly be exercised on the local officials to construct subways, similar in general to the Fourth avenue subway in Brooklyn; subways which are intended, not to accommodate existing traffic, but to develop a new district. Such subways will necessarily he operated at a loss for a certain number of years; and while the city may be justi¬ fied in constructing them, they should be charged up as a debt rather than as an asset until they begin to pay for them¬ selves. Only subways operated at an unquestionable profit should be counted as a form of property whose purchase or construction has not added to the charges, which must in one way or another be paid out of taxation, and which con¬ sequently is really part of the debt saddled upon its real estate. The only way in which it can be proved that sub¬ ways are self supporting is by actual experiment and not until the Jesuits of the experiment are known should the money appropriated for the improvement be charged off. THE other interesting subject of legislation will be the Louis Charter. Just what the Legislature will do in respect to this bill has not been divulged. It appears to be absolutely certain, hbwever, that it will not pass th'e instru¬ ment in the form prepared by the Commission. The politi¬ cians of both parties are opposed to the abolition of the administrative functions of the Borough Presidents, because under ordinary conditions they come into the control of a large amount of patronage by their ability to control these officials. Their opposition might have been overcome in case public opinion among the taxpayers of the city had declared itself emphatically and decisively in favor of a more responsible organization of borough administration; but no such public opinion has received expression. The taxpay¬ ers have either been indifferent, or they have been actively hostile. They have not cared how irresponsible and waste¬ ful borough administration was, provided the borough of¬ ficials could only he committed as an essential duty, to spend as much as possible of the city's money on borough work. If the financial condition of the city has its dangerous as¬ pects and possibilities at the present time, the taxpayers themselves are in a measure responsible. But whatever their general responsibility, they have shown themselves en¬ tirely incapable of understanding that the Ivins Charter offers them the best chance of economical municipal gov¬ ernment that the city has enjoyed for several generations, and the result is that the Republican majority in the Legis¬ lature will be permitted to deal with the hills prepared by the Commission according to the dictates of their partisan interests. They can either let the bills die, or they can amend them until they cease to be any essential improvement on the existing charter. The influence of Governor Hughes can be counted ou the other side; but wiiatever influence the Governor has will necessarily be used chiefly tor the purpose of passing his direct primary bills. The charter will have to take care of itself, aud the indifference of the taxpayers will leave it at the mercy of the particular currents of partisan political interest whicii happen to be blowing most strongly at Albany during the coming session. IN a recent letter to "The Sun" Air. Edgar J. Levey refers to the agitation ou behaU of equal pay for men and wo¬ men teachers doing the same class of work as "perhaps the greatest danger" which lias ever menaced the interest of the taxpayers of New York City; and he characterizes their atti¬ tude to this danger as one of "flacia iuaifference." The Record and Guide believes that Mr. Levey does not exagger¬ ate in the least the direct and indirect dangers which lurk in this agitation for "equal pay." In the first place, the direct cost ot the proposed raise in the salaries of the women teachers would cause an immediate aud a very perceptible increase in the tax rate. J ust what the increase would amount to cannot be definit'ely stated, but the increased expenditure would be not less than $15,000,OUO a year aud ought easily reach $1U,000,UOU. The tax rate would al¬ most certainly be increased about 10 points which would mean an increase of not far from seven per cent, in all tax bills. This increased expenditure would be simply so much money taken out of the taxpayers of New York without any possibility existing of getting a penny of it back; aud it would constitute consequently an unmitigated loss to the city. It is absolutely incredible that the claim should be considered seriously for one moment by anybody connected with the financial administration of New York. Here is a city whose credit is already suffering, which cannot tind money for many excellent and even necessary improvements, demanded both by the increase in business and population, and by the higher prevailing ideals of social responsibility. It is seriously proposed that the difficulty of finding money for all these excellent purposes should be greatly increased for the sake of paying enlarged salaries to one special clasa of employees, who do not claim that they are paid less than similar work by women commands elsewhere in the Union, and who have accepted the position they occupy with¬ out any protest that they were being underpaid. They demand that the city make them a present of $8,000,000, more or less every year, merely because in case the city had employed men, teachers of the other sex would have cost $8,000,000 more. It is perfectly right that the city should not underpay its employees, even though the prevailing rate of wages in private industry for that class of work is too low; but to discriminate on behalf of a small fraction of its employees, because their work is the same as that a few better paid men, is the kind of "Justice," which injures every taxpayer in New York and every other city employee, without doing anything to improve the general economic standing of womeu. A precedent of that kind, which was followed in other possible instances, could result in nothing but municipal bankruptcy. When one remembers that an annual appro¬ priation of $8,000,000 would pay the interest and amortiza¬ tion charges on over $160,000,000 worth of city stock, one begins to realize how far this demand of a few women teach¬ ers would, in case it were granted, deprive the city of a desirable spending capacity. With $160,000,000 all the immediate rapid transit needs of New York could be satis¬ fied, and the lives of hundreds of thousands of people ren¬ dered more convenient, more sanitary and happier. THE fact that a house in Firty-seventh street is going to be altered aud converted into physicians' offices, suggests a question as to the future of that crosstown street, will it become like the other broad cross town streets, de¬ voted to business purposes? Aud if so, how soon will the process of business occupation be substantially completed? The answers to these questions are somewhat complicated, because the proximity of Fifty-ninth street makes the case of Fifty-seventh street different from that of Thirty-fourth or Forty-second street. Fifty-ninth street has already been partly occupied by business because it is the first street south of Central Park and because surface cars were early run upon its roadway. The fact that the Queensboro Bridge terminates at Second avenue and Fifty-ninth street will tend hereafter to give it a still more exclusively busi¬ ness character. On the other hand, its adaptability to busi- (Continued on Page 4.) The Recoid anti Guicie has been the standard for more than FORTY YEARS.